Fatherhood?

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Growing up I knew I wanted to have 2 kids; a boy and a girl. A symmetrical family that would fit perfectly in the suburbs. For most of my life, this was my dream.

Now at age 34, I don’t know if I want kids.

It’s odd because my actions are sort of preparing me for fatherhood: I tackle life’s obstacles head on, I try to lead by example, I love my godson Carter, I’ve got dad jokes, and I find stories of parenting very interesting.

Stories of how a father maintains and grows their family through the chaos of life are enlightening. I soak up all I can from their experiences because we share the same belief that the most important thing in life are relationships.

Even with an affinity for fatherhood, I don’t have a desire to be a father. As a human male, shouldn't I have an innate desire to procreate?

It’s an empty feeling; a sense of indifference coupled with not wanting to feel indifferent. For the longest time, I needed an answer.

Why do I feel this way?

Our instant gratification culture has conditioned me to feel entitled. Every question has to be answered, and it has to be answered immediately. Google trained us well.

What’s more insidious is that the need for an answer implies that there is a problem: I felt like there was something wrong with me for even questioning fatherhood. This quest for an answer only made me feel inadequate and lost.

essential readings

Whenever I’m in a rough spot I turn to contentment: the idea that things are good as they stand right now. Contentment isn't sexy, doesn't boost the economy, and won't get you any likes on Instagram. Yet, it has always led me in the right direction, which is that my life is good as-is, blemishes and uncertainty included. 

Trying to find answers when there are none is a waste of time, a distraction, and unhealthy.

Trying to force an answer will lead to regret.

Not all questions have answers and that’s okay.

Maybe in a couple years I'll finally feel that desire to become a father. Maybe I won’t. Either way, I'll be just fine. Life is more interesting when you don't know what's going to happen next.

Dealing with Frustration

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Frustration sucks. It can ruin your day, your relationships, and even your health. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to avoid. It’s inevitability makes frustration natural: a price we pay to be human.

That price comes in many forms:

• This traffic isn’t moving.
• My boss is making me work late.
• This computer is so damn slow.

Why do things have to be so difficult? It’s not my fault but why do I feel like I’m being punished?

Over the past year I’ve come to figure out that, for most of my life, I had it all wrong...

FRUSTRATION IS A REJECTION OF REALITY

“Reality can suck if we want it to be different”

— Leo Babauta

Frustration is a rejection of how things are; a reaction to not getting what you want. It sounds childish because it is. Bad things don’t happen to you because everyone and everything has it out for you. Sometimes bad things just happen because that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

To better explain this I want to break down a classic example of frustration:

How other people act

The frustration: Whether it’s your family, friend, or co-worker, people will do or say something that bothers you.

The reality: People have different values and beliefs that shape the way they live. The actions they take and the words they speak are determined by these values and beliefs.

The root of the frustration: The problem is never the other person. They are just being who they are. The problem is how you react to them.

The bottom line: People are able to act however they want, it’s their life, not yours. If you react by getting frustrated, it’s because they aren’t acting how you want them to.

From immovable traffic to the behavior of world leaders, being frustrated won’t change the reality of the situation. All it will do is cause you stress, consume valuable time, and, heck, it may even ruin a relationship or two.

Frustration is unavoidable, so instead of trying to find ways to never feel frustrated again, I found a way to minimize it.

1. Be self-aware when I feel frustrated.
2. Question why I feel frustrated. Recognize that my frustration is the result of not getting what I want.
3. Accept that it’s my problem. Not the other person or the situation.
4. Fix my own damn problem because it’s my responsibility not someone else's. In most cases, realizing that I’m acting selfishly by wanting the situation to be more favorable towards me is enough to make me calm down. Slowly but surely, the frustration goes away.

It’s a simple, but very difficult process. It takes practice, humility, and strength. But the payoff is worth it. Being less frustrated has made me less stressed, which probably means I’ll live longer if I keep this up.

Living longer is pretty cool.

Life is long

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“Life is long if you know how to use it.”

— Seneca

By the time I turned 29, I'd been living in LA for 4 years. Prioritizing my film editing career, I spent years honing my craft, culminating with trips to Sundance and SXSW. My overwhelming feeling after 4 years? "That sure as hell went by fast."

Damn, I’m almost 30. Where did the time go? I would often ask myself. Each time I would feel a little regretful; a sense that I wasn’t satisfied with how my life was going up until that point. I wanted to do more, but feeling like life was short, I would start to panic.

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.”

— Seneca

Why was my life going by so fucking fast? After 33 years of wondering, I finally figured it out. For me, life was going fast because I was taking actions to speed up my life. Those specific actions came in the form of escaping.

escapism | noun: the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy.

 

• Always on my phone. Countless check-ins on social media were common. I found it easier to live someone else’s life than my own.

• Binge watching TV/Movies. Incredible thought goes into character/story development to make the audience relate to them. This results in hundreds of hours spent living vicariously through characters and stories. I found it easier to live fictional lives than my own.

• Working too much. If nothing was going right in my life, I could always fall back on my career. Career progress gave me a false sense of fulfillment. By tying my self-worth to my career, I worked 50-70 hours a week. It consumed me, leaving me no time to live a life I actually wanted.

“...when [time] is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing”

— Seneca

I actively escaped my real life because it wasn’t going as well as I wanted it to. It was much easier to live a life that wasn't my own. Since I got struck by the cancer bug, I’ve put a lot of effort into creating a life I would want to live. That meant changing priorities and making sure my actions matched what I believed in.

Ever since then I’ve focused less on “escaping” and more on what is important: like Paulina, family, and health. I’m less stressed, healthier, and happier.

The interesting thing that happened was that this change slowed life down; I came to the conclusion that life slows down when you spend time on what is truly important to you. In other words, when you spend time living a life you actually want.

My life is slower but much more enjoyable. This is the type of life I could live for a long time.